Intel Brief – August 2011

Oceano sewage spill was likely preventable.
A sewage spill in Oceano, California following heavy rain in December 2010 might have been prevented but for two errors at the South San Luis Obispo County Sanitation District, a sanitation district administrator said June 1. Because of a closed discharge valve, a pump was not able to push the raw sewage quickly enough through the plant. If it had, the probability of a sewage spill would have been very low, according to a report the district sent the week of May 30 to the California Water Resources Control Board. The district administrator said he believes the valve was inadvertently left closed after maintenance at the plant. District staff estimated that 384,000 gallons of sewage spilled after floodwater flowed into the wastewater treatment plant and caused an electrical short that shut down four influent pumps about 10:30 a.m. December 19.

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Contaminated Fort Peck area cut off from water.
A pipeline failure has cut off the water supply to about two dozen homes in a contaminated area of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana, leaving residents without drinking and bath water for more than 3 weeks. The pipeline from Poplar’s water supply system to the homes north of the city has been out of service since May 13, said the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes’ environmental program manager. The 23 homes have received the piped water since 2005, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered three oil companies to build the line because of a spreading underground plume of contamination from the East Poplar oil field. The water pipeline has had dozens of breaks since Murphy Exploration and Production Co., Pioneer Natural Resources USA Inc., and Samson Hydrocarbons Co. built it, the program manager said. The tribes believe the problems are due to poor installation and operation, and that the oil companies should be forced to provide them with a reliable system.

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Stolen RSA data used to hack defense contractor.
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin has confirmed that a recent attack on its network was aided by the theft of confidential data relating to RSA SecurID tokens employees use to access sensitive corporate and government computer systems. According to an e-mail the company sent to reporters, theft of the data for the RSA tokens was “a direct contributing factor” in May’s intrusion into its network. New York Times, which reported on the e-mail earlier, cited government and industry officials, who said the hackers used some of the purloined information and other techniques to “piece together the coded password of a Lockheed contractor who had access to Lockheed’s system.” Lockheed said it detected the attack soon enough to prevent those responsible from accessing important data. The company is in the process of replacing 45,000 SecurID tokens used by its workers when logging in corporate networks from outside the office. The contractor, which makes fighter planes, spy satellites, and other gear related to national security, is also requiring workers to change their passwords.

Posted by FanningCommunications
on Aug 1st, 2011 and filed under Intel Brief.
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